Friday, June 13, 2014

Subject: re: Iraq in Peril

The "Sunk-cost Fallacy" kept U.S. troops fighting, bleeding and dying in Vietnam for years beyond reason. In the event, our puppet government there fell and the sky did not follow. The U.S. has no vested interest in Iraq . Iraq was an artificial construct carved from the defeated Ottoman empire just as Yugoslavia was hacked from the Austro-Hungarian corpse. Either could be held together for a while by a repressive government but neither had any ethnic, cultural or political coherence.

The U.S. does, however, have an interest in the region. The Kurds have waited since the foundation of the United Nations for the self-determination that is their Right. If we asked nicely, we could have an airbase forever in free Kurdistan.